idk i just lurk here @imterribleatpickingaurl - Tumblr Blog

it’s so magical and beautiful that there are sprawling interconnected cave systems carved deep into the earth by various geological forces and you don’t have to go in them. there are miles and miles of stone passageways in total darkness that require you to exhale all the air out of your lungs to squeeze through parts of them and you don’t have to be there. some of these squeezes are underwater and require cave divers to take off their oxygen tanks and push them through ahead of them and me i am above ground looking at the sky as we speak. there are untold subterranean wonders no human has ever seen and i will not be the one to discover them #grateful #blessed

mumblesplash

cave divers when they are happily married with kids and beloved by their community but theres a crack in the bottom of a lake called The Devil’s Rotting Esophagus where 57 people have died

sylveonsbowties

got a few requests for a shiny alt of my recent espeon drawing, here it is with the original under the cut :)

calebwittebane

are we serious

onion-souls

Mercury is the most charismatic substance in the universe. Like, there are a lot of things that historical scholars have been wrong about, but you usually understand why; flawed hypotheses, inadequate measuring tools, half-truths, secondary factors that muddy the results. But people across Eurasia saw that shit and just assumed it must be the key to immortality, despite a mercury tonic being literally the opposite of an immortality potion. And they kept trying it despite all obvious evidence. Taoists burned through emperors like lab rats. No other metal has this much rizz

bird-gifs-collection-agency

this baby tawny frogmouth is hungry hungry hungry! hes taking it all!

taurzza

anarchopuppy

sometimes being a fan of something means not wanting them to make any more of it

thegorgonist

MINNOW PIN! TINY SILVER FISHIE! I'm in love with how these turned out. I want to wear like 10 on a jacket and have a school of fish with me wherever I go. Hard to photograph but they look amazing in person! Sometimes a simple design really stands out~~~~ In my shop!

battlefem-deactivated20170404

you wanna see some badass shit from the early 20th century?? The Lumière brothers created the first full color photograph… in fucking 1903! So these dudes dyed potatoes (in red, blue, and green), mashed them down into just pure fuckin’ starch, and used these dyed potato starches as filters to block out/let in certain wavelengths of light. They coated one side of a glass plate with the starches and sensitized the other side with a mixture of gelatin and light sensitive materials (silver nitrate) and loaded these plates in their cameras.. This is a really simple explanation of the process and I may have missed some things A few of my favorite autochrome photos:

itsoldjohn

that last one is literally a LOOK

cassiocantdrink

yes!

but lets not forget sergei prokudin-gorskiy, who developed a similar process in 1902, published in 1903 and then toured russia to take hundreds of color photographs:

AND the guy developed color slide processing as well. as a person fairly familiar with modern b/w processing at home, but never EVER stepping into color (negatives or slides) territory, i’d say, BAMF to the highest degree.

petermorwood

Here are a few more Prokudin-Gorskiy / Gorskii shots, and a reminder once again that these aren’t recently colourised BW images but original colour photos taken about 120 years ago. Many colourised pics don’t look this good. Some modern colour pics don’t look this good (as I know all too well. “Delete image Y/N? Y!”)

This is Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”.

Alim Khan, Emir of Bukhara…

…and his Minister of the Interior.

A Type B-15 steam locomotive…

Another of those peasant girls with guest-gifts of berries…

The Church of St John the Baptist at Staraya Ladoga…

…and a Sergei Prokudin-Gorskiy self-portrait.

Unlike some current selfies ;-> he’s not dominating the image, so here’s a closer shot.

Nice hat…

rcrisu

Stygian and Ranjit, Diptych, commission for @flameunquenched

Had such a lovely lovely time with these!!

mankillercalledbunny

The answer to "How did these Ancient People do this????" is basically always

1. A lot of dudes. Just a ton of fucking people from beginning to end of the process.

2. Ancient people weren't stupid, they just figured shit out the same way we do: fuck around until you find out.

3. We're gonna plan this out and it's gonna take ten fucking years, and you will cope.

4. Sticks and string are surprisingly versatile and can be used for a variety of purposes, like moving stuff and making sure things are even and go in the spot you wanted to put them in!

5. I want to make this easier and more efficient to move. If I put this on the round thing and push, it will move. If I put this in water, it will move. If I get some animals and rope and have a whole bunch of them drag it, it will move. All of these things are a better option than one guy trying to pick the whole fucking thing up.

ralfmaximus

No safety regulations

No weekends

Child labor

Slave labor

"The king said to do it"

History does not record the stupid megaprojects that failed

nudistcat

"History does not record the stupid megaprojects that failed."

Ancient civilizations may have spent a lot less time committing their architectural fuckups to parchment or song, but archaeology has rooted out the evidence.

There are several "nailed it" pyramids scattered around Egypt predating the three at Giza that stood the test of time. The Bent Pyramid, where they got the angles wrong and had to adjust halfway up. The Black Pyramid, which demonstrated Why We Don't Use Mud Bricks in a Floodplain. Etcetera.

Across the world, we also have "rejected by Quality Control" misshapen stone sarcophagi, obelisks/menhirs/stelae that toppled and broke during the raising process, and half-carved Easter Island moai still in the original quarry.

ralfmaximus

Exactly so. But I would wager for every "nailed it" there's a half dozen projects that failed so utterly their existence is lost to time.

Like, if a massive tunneling project fails, you bury your dead workers in that suddenly convenient hole and blame it on the previous administration. Problem solved!